The Church and the Chosen People

Bill Saletan has a fascinating account of attending a bioethics conference at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. Plenty of higlights there if your interested in efforts to develop ethical standards in the realm of stem cell research: check it out. There he chats with Austin Ruse about the remarkably successful efforts of Opus Dei Father John McCloskey to convert prominent figures:

Robert Bork, Larry Kudlow, Bernard Nathanson, Bob Novak, and Mark Belnick, the super-lawyer who got nailed in the Tyco scandal. Hadley Arkes has all but joined the club. I do the math: five Jews and an agnostic. What did they do it for? Maybe for what Judaism can't promise: answers.

Along with being my great read for the day (runner-up, NY Times article on Philippe Roger and the longtime anti-American sentiments of the French), this is an interesting point for me. My problem with the Church lately has been precisely what these men may have found: answers. In particular, the Church's answers lately have struck me as all too easy, and even more problematic, not accurate. Combining this with the rather mechanical descriptions of the sacramental dispensation of grace, and I find it something that I simply do not believe. In the case of biotechnology I side more with the Catholic point of view, but in general find myself increasingly "Jewish" spiritual sensibilities.